Stereoscopic or three-dimensional vision may be produced on a two-dimensional medium by creating a pair of stereoscopic images; a left eye image and a right eye image. If a viewer sees only the left eye image with the left eye and the right eye image with the right eye, the viewer perceives a three-dimensional image from the two stereoscopic images.
Conventional video display devices such as computer monitors produce an image by rapidly creating a plurality of horizontal display lines stacked in a vertical frame. Once the horizontal display lines reaches the bottom of the vertical frame, the image is refreshed by recommencing the horizontal display lines from the top.
Currently, it is known to produce stereoscopic vision on a display device using a technique whereby the left eye image is held in one memory buffer and the right eye image is held in another memory buffer. The right and left eye images are rapidly alternated on the display device while liquid crystal display or LCD glasses, synchronized to the alternating pattern, restrict the viewers eyes to only seeing the corresponding right or left image as it is presented on the display device.
However, such stereoscopic systems suffer from certain disadvantages. Current stereoscopic systems are restricted by processor speed as to how fast it can synchronize the LCD glasses and alternate the left and right eye images on the display device. Such systems require more video display card memory, to contain right and left eye images, than is available on standard video display cards. Current standards for video display cards contain 1,000,000 bytes of memory while stereoscopic systems require 1,843,200 bytes of memory to display 640.times.480 full resolution color images. This restricts stereoscopic systems to low resolution images.
Current stereoscopic systems are also restricted by a video display card's speed as to how fast it can transfer the left and right eye images to the video display device.
Current stereoscopic systems are dependent on the type of host's video display card memory capacity, the speed at which the video display card can alternate images and the speed at which the processor can control the stereoscopic system, thus restricting the use of stereoscopic vision to specific hardware configurations.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for an improved stereoscopic display system which overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art.